Archive for September 2016

No, for once I’m not referring to Congress, or even politics, but two actual snakes, both poisonous. The truly odd thing is that one is a water moccasin, commonly called a cottonmouth, and the other is a copperhead. It isn’t common to see two different species fighting each other, and these particular two generally prefer different habitats, so this footage is all the more remarkable, even in Arkansas.

The few snake fights I have personally observed were generally between the same species, and none bit, but in the only one I saw between two different species, they bit and rolled furiously instead of merely wrestling.

The Guardian is hardly a right-wing rag, even by British standards, yet it can’t hide a certain admiration for the tireless efforts of Daniel Hanan to restore British sovereignty. I like and respect Hanan as much as I do Nigel Farage. They are both men of uncompromising principle who stubbornly pursue their goals. America could us a fair number of such men.

I’m calling a foul on Hewlett Packard for installing software in its printers that will prevent the machine from printing if it detects anything but an HP brand cartridge, rejecting even refilled HP cartridges.

First of all, it’s slimy behavior by a corporation. Second, it’s going to be a public relations disaster. Third, I strongly suspect it’s illegal. If I remember correctly, there was a lawsuit some years ago which determined that a manufacturer could only void the warranty of a piece of equipment, but could not render it unusable. Part of it was governed by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which governs most consumer purchases i our country. I don’t recall if any of the various state consumer laws were involved. To some degree, most electronics makers violate that federal law with their obnoxious little stickers warning “Warranty void if removed.”

We shall see, but in the meantime, be warned.

UPDATE; Customer feedback must have been brutal, because HP has walked back the update.

A United Nations panel is demanding that the U.S. give reparations to African-Americans for slavery. Alan Dershowitz has it about right in saying that the U.N. has no business lecturing the U.S. For me, as soon as the U.N. makes reparations for all the sexual assaults its peacekeepers have committed, for all the innocents its peacekeepers allowed to be killed, as soon as it shows it is capable of recognizing its own faults it will acquire some standing to talk about ours.

The former Israeli President, who was the chief architect of its nuclear weapons program and a driving force behind its interim peace accords with the Palestinians, has died after suffering a stroke. I have long thought that being President of Israel is the hardest job in the world, because not only do your neighbors want to annihilate you, but you are subject to the lies and betrayals of others, most notably presidents of the United States, such as Barack Obama, who court the Jewish vote assiduously for elections, then stab you in the back because they believe in the laughably misnamed peace process.

Peres was not as fine an orator as Benjamin Netanyahu, but he still managed to outwork and outlive all his rivals, no mean feat in and of itself in the mean times he lived in. Whatever you view of Peres, you must admit he had an interesting life.

Few people write with the moral clarity of Dr. Thomas Sowell. His brief dissertation on the damage done to blacks by granting them soul-destroying “favors” is a must-read which explains much of the current racial tension in our country and its direct causes.

If you are black and still continue voting for Democrats after reading this, you are part of the problem, not the solution.

I confess I did not watch the debate. Yesterday was a long, tiring and rather unpleasant day, and I was in no mood for politics, especially since I have no candidate to vote for, only ones to vote against. I did see some footage with no sound while I waited for the local late news, and my observation was that Trump looked dour and dull, and Hillary looked like a wide-eyed robot.

Roger Simon may have it right, and We the People may have gotten the debate we deserved. Maybe we should call it the who’s less crazy debate? Trump was taking on an entire system, not just Hillary, and as I expected, moderator Lester Holt couldn’t quite keep his little fingers off the scales. I find it amusing that he is apparently a registered Republican, but does anyone believe he has ever in his entire life voted for a Republican?

I was interested in John Hinderaker’s comments, and those of Matthew Walther, though I suppose that Thomas Lifson’s point that who you are determines your opinion is correct. Jonah Goldberg is also right that how you score the debate determines who won. With those caveats, pundits and viewers had their own opinions, with the majority of snap polls favoring Trump. Perhaps the most reliable gauge is the effect the debate had on a bar full of undecideds and Democrats, who preferred Trump the gentleman to Hillary the slugger.

No one can dispute that Hillary has great command of the facts, which she emits with well-rehearsed efficiency, and while she may have made more points, Trump may have scored more. My questions is: if Hillary was truly thinking she was hitting a home run, why was she demanding during the debate that her media pals go after Trump?